The conventional terminal board for connecting jumper type wire leads comprises a flat platelike horizontal base and an array of binding post terminals upstanding from that base, each such terminal comprising a vertical cylindrical post, a threaded rod coaxial with and of smaller diameter than the post and projecting upwards from its top, and a gnarled circular nut received in threaded relation on the rod at its top. An insulated wire lead is connected to such terminal by stripping the insulation from a free end of the lead, shaping that free end to curve back on itself to form a hook, placing such hook in the vertical gap between the top of the post and the bottom of the nut so that the hook encircles the vertical rod, and then screwing the nut down on the rod to squeeze the hooked free end of the lead between the post and nut and thereby make electromechanical contact between the lead and the terminal.
While terminal boards of the sort described have been in widespread use for many years, they are subject to various disadvantages of which some are as follows. While the insulation is being stripped from the lead, it is easy for its metal core to be nicked so as to ultimately result in parting of the lead at the nick. Further, the requirements that the stripped free end be bent into hook form and then placed around the rod, and the nut then screwed down, are burdensome in that undue time and labor must be spent to fulfill them. Still further, the lead, after connection to the terminal, is poorly protected in the sense that the lead is directly connected to the bare nut so as to, say, become grounded in the event something touches the nut to ground it.
Presumably to overcome such disadvantages, there has recently been developed by the Reliable Electric Manufacturing Company a different kind of terminal board in which the mentioned posts on the horizontal base have been replaced by insulated housings arranged in rows and columns on the base. These housings support respective push-down insulated cap in each of which are a pair of entrance holes for insertion thereinto of the free ends of a pair of electrical conductors as, say, paired tip and ring conductors. Once such conductors have been inserted into a particular cap, that cap is pushed down relative to its housing, and that pushing down causes the free ends of the inserted conductors to be electromechanically connected with respective metallic terminal elements received in the housing and in turn connected with other conductors disposed under such base.
A problem with such a terminal board, however, is that the entrance holes for threading the leads into the caps are horizontal and parallel to the base. As a result, such terminal board is disadvantageous in the respect that, in order to thread a lead into an entrance hole of the cap of a particular terminal, it is necessary that the hand which grasps and guides the lead be positioned awkwardly close to the base of the board and be kept in that position while being moved parallel to the base in order to guide the lead into the hole. Further, in trying to so move the hand in order to feed the lead into the hole, it is easy for the hand or the lead grasped thereby to be thrown off course by bumping into a housing adjacent to the one into which the lead is being guided. Thus, with a terminal board of the sort just described, the process of threading the leads into the entrance holes in the terminals on the board is unduly difficult and time consuming.